Google's hoaxes: Map

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April Fool's hoaxes

2000

Google announced a new "MentalPlex" search technology that
supposedly read the user's mind todetermine what the user wanted to
search for, thus eliminating the step of actually typing in the
search query. This always led to a page full of April Fool's
results.

2002

Google reveals the technology behind its PageRank Systems—PigeonRank. Google touts the
benefits of this cost-effective and efficient means of ranking
pages and reassures readers that there is no animal cruelty
involved in the process. The article makes many humorous references
and puns based on computer terminology and how
Google PageRank really works.

This hoax was probably intended as a parody
of Google's then invite-only email service
called Gmail. Although ostensibly free, the
company claimed the beverage could only be obtained by returning
the cap of a Google Gulp bottle to a local
grocery store: a causal loop. In the Google Gulp FAQ, Google replies to the observation "I mean, isn't
this whole invite-only thing kind of bogus?" by saying "Dude, it's
like you've never even heard of viral marketing."

2006

On April Fool's Day 2006, Google Romance was announced on the main
Google search page with the introduction, "Dating is a search
problem. Solve it with Google Romance." It pretends to offer a
"Soulmate Search" to send users on a "Contextual Date". A parody of online dating,
it amusingly had a link for "those who generally favor the 'throw
enough stuff at the wall' approach to online dating" to Post
multiple profiles with a bulk upload file, you sleaze in
addition to Post your Google Romance profile. Clicking on
either of these gave an error page, which explained that it was an
April Fool's joke and included links to previous April Fool's Jokes
for nostalgia.

2007

Gmail Paper

At about 10:00 PM Pacific time (where Google has its headquarters)
on 30 March2007,
Google changed the login page for Gmail to announce a new service
called Gmail Paper. The service offered to allow users of Google's
free webmail service to add e-mails to a
"Paper Archive", which Google would print (on "96% post-consumer
organic soybean sputum") and mail via
traditional post. The service would be free, supported by bold, red
advertisements printed on the back of the printed messages. Image
attachments would also be printed on high-quality glossy paper,
though MP3 and WAV files
would not be printed. The page detailing more information about the
service features photographs of Ian Spiro and Carrie Kemper,
current employees of Google. Also featured are Product Marketing
Managers of Gmail Anna-Christina Douglas, and Kevin Systrom.

Google TiSP

Google TiSP (short for Toilet Internet Service
Provider) was a fictitious free broadband
service supposedly released by Google. This service would make use
of a standard toilet and sewage lines to
provide free Internet connectivity at a speed of 8 Mbit/s (2 Mbit/s
upload) (or up to 32 Mbit/s with a paid plan). The user would drop
a weighted end of a long, Google-supplied fiber-optic cable in
their toilet and flush it. Around 60 minutes later, the end would
be recovered and connected to the Internet by a "Plumbing Hardware
Dispatcher (PHD)". The user would then connect their end to a
Google-supplied wireless router and run the Google-supplied
installation media on a Windows XP or
Vista computer ("Mac and Linux support
coming soon"). Alternatively, a user could request a professional
installation, in which Google would deploy nanobots through the plumbing to complete the
process. The free service would be supported by "discreet DNA sequencing" of "personal bodily output"
to display online ads that relate to culinary preferences and
personal health. Google also referenced the cola-and-Mentos reaction in
their FAQ: "If you're still experiencing problems, drop eight mints
into the bowl and add a two-liter bottle of diet soda."

2008

Adsense for Conversations

Blogger "Google Weblogs (beta)"

The Blogger dashboard featured an announcement for Google Weblogs,
or "GWeblogs," or "Gblogs," the next revolution in personal
publishing. Features include algorithms putting your best content
at the top of your blog (rather than publishing by reverse
chronology), automatically populating your blog's sidebar with the
most relevant content, posting directly into Google search results
for maximum visibility, blog headers refreshed with images from
Google's team of artists for anniversaries of a scientific
achievement (similar to Google Doodle),
and automatic content generation ('Unsure of what to post about?
Just click "I'm Feeling Lucky" and we'll "take care" of the
rest!')

Dajare

Google launches Dajare in Japan (google.co.jp), with the mission of
"organizing the world's laughter."

gDay

Google announces gDay in Australia
(http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/gday/press.html), a new beta
search technology that will search web pages 24 hours before they
are created.

Gmail Custom Time

Gmail Custom Time feature hoax

Gmail's sign-in page and a banner at the top of each gmail inbox
announced a new feature, called Gmail Custom Time, that would allow
its users to "pre-date" their messages and choose to have the
message appear as "read" or "unread". The new feature uses the
slogan "Be on time. Every time."

Around 11:00 p.m. EST March 31, 2008, on the newer and older
version of Gmail, but not in the basic HTML version, in the upper
right corner, next to Settings, a link appeared labeled, "New!
Gmail Custom Time". The link led to a 404
error until April 1, when it led to the full Gmail Custom Time
hoax page. Clicking any of the three links at the bottom of the
page brought the user to a page stating that Gmail Custom time was,
in fact, their April Fool's Day joke.

Google wrote that the new joke feature "utilizes an e-flux
capacitor (a pun from the movie Back
to the Future) to resolve issues of causality." Fake
testimonials are given by "beta users"; one example is, "I used to
be an honest person; but now I don't have to be. It's just so much
easier this way. I've gained a lot of productivity by not having to
think about doing the 'right' thing."

The feature only allows for ten pre-dated emails per year, claiming
that any more "would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of
time, thus rendering the feature useless."

Google Book Search Scratch and Sniff

Google Book Search has a new section allowing users to "scratch and
sniff" certain books. Users are asked to "...please place your nose
near the monitor and click 'Go'", which then "loads odors". When
clicking on "Help", users are redirected to a page in a book that
describes the origins of April Fools' Day .

Google Dialect Translation

Google Docs

A little easter egg was added, where a user can click the file menu
and directly under new document is "New Airplane" which immediately
opens a copy of a Google branded paper airplane. To reach the file
menu, click the new menu, then "Document" then a new window opens.
The image that is embedded in the "New Airplane" document can be
seen here.

Google Manpower Search

Google launches Manpower Search (谷歌人肉搜索) in China (google.cn). This
new feature is powered by 25 million volunteers who do the
searching around the clock. When the user entered a keyword,
volunteers will search any possible answers from a mass of paper
documents as well as online resources. The user is expected to get
the search result within 32 seconds.

Google Wake Up Kit

Google launched their "Wake Up Kit" as a calendar notification
option.

The 'wake up' notification uses several progressively
more annoying alerts to wake you up. First it will send an SMS
message to your phone. If that fails, more coercive means will be
used. The kit includes an industrial-sized bucket and is designed
to be connected to your water main for automatic filling. In
addition, a bed-flipping device is included for forceful removal
from your sleeping quarters.

Virgle

Google announces a joint project with the Virgin Group to establish a permanent human
settlement on Mars
(http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html). This operation has been
named Project Virgle. The announcement includes
videos of Richard Branson (founder
of Virgin Group) as well as Larry Page
and Sergey Brin (the founders of Google)
on YouTube, talking about Virgle. An
"application" to join the settlement includes questions such
as:

After you submit the application, the site notifies you that you
are not fit for space, or that your application is fine and "all
you have to do is submit your video" [as a response to their video
on YouTube]. As a result, an open source Virgle group has been
established, OpenVirgle. On the FAQ page, the final question
is "Okay, come on -- seriously. Is this Virgle thing for real?" The
reply links to a page that tells the user it's an April Fool's
joke, and then mentions that the user "Dragged us out of our lovely
little fantasy world, to crush all our hopes and dreams." [124017]
Virgle Application Page -
http://www.google.com/virgle/application.html

Yogurt

YouTube

On April
1, 2008, all featured videos on the UK and Australian homepages, and later, all international
homepages, of Google-owned YouTube linked to
a video of Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up", causing
all users of the website who clicked on featured videos to be
Rickrolled.This was the first year
YouTube participated in Google's April Fool's Day tradition.

2009

google runs on Microsoft Windows IIS/3.0

google.com.au reported as if it ran on IIS/3.0 (on Linux) and
google.com on Apache/0.8.4.

CADIE

The announcement of CADIE was made on March 31, 2009 11:59 PM by
the CADIE Team, not on April 1. The announcement on the Google blog
was made at 4/01/2009 12:01:00 AM.

The introduction page and all of the references to CADIE in
Google's Products were taken down on April 2, replaced with a
message stating:

We apologize for the recent disruption(s) to our
service(s).

Please stand by while order is being restored.

However the technology page describing the technical capabilities
of the software remained at:

When using Google Books or GMail, a user would come across an
announcement dated March 31, 2009 at 11:59:59, declaring a new
"Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity". CADIE is
also mentioned on the gBall FAQ page: "Google's new CADIE
technology will interpret the data obtained from each ball to
provide useful tips to owners". There was also a link on Google's
Homepage for CADIE, and a blog entry in Google's official blog.

CADIE technology is also used to generate "senryu" (a type of Japanese poem similar to haiku)
based on search terms for certain Japanese queries.

The Google Search
homepage had a link to the CADIE announcement, stating that "For several years
now a small research group has been working on some challenging
problems in the areas of neural networking, natural language and
autonomous problem-solving. Last fall this group achieved a
significant breakthrough: a powerful new technique for solving
reinforcement learning problems, resulting in the first functional
global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster." The page links
to the blog below.

On mobile devices, a link shows up to Brain Search, which uses CADIE technology to "index
your brain". This is what it all looks like from a mobile
device.

YouTube

Screenshot of an upside video on
YouTube on April 1st, 2009

On April 1, 2009, Youtube gave some users a
look at a new "viewing experience" when they selected a
video within certain areas such as the "recommended for you"
section. This new interface caused the whole layout including the
video you were watching to flip upside down. Although the option
was not visible for some, it could be viewed by adding &flip=1
to the end of a video URL. Adding &flip=1 to the end of a video
URL no longer causes this effect, and the video loads normally. A
page on "tips for viewing the new layout" suggested users hang
their monitors upside down from the ceiling, although the layout
did not reverse mouse-control.

Gmail

When one is using the Gmail service, they will
notice that it has a new option, named "Gmail Autopilot" in which the service would analyze an
email. On that page it says under the FAQ section,"You can adjust
tone, typo propensity, and preferred punctuation from the Autopilot
tab under Settings." However, if a person logs into their Gmail
account and goes under the Settings tab they will notice that there
is no Autopilot tab. The program could be customised to contain
certain types of grammatical or spelling errors, as well as
complexity and length of the sentence. It also has a way of
responding to relationship related messages, such as if someone
spoke aggressively, even in a humorous way, the system would
"terminate relationship."

Google Australia announced last week the development of a ball that
will change how Australian Football is played the world over.The
newest football technology - "gBall"-- is a prototype ball for use
in the Australian Football League with GPS.

Google
Australia announces ("New! Get the newest football technology -
gBall.") that they are developing a prototype
ball for use in the Australian Football League with
GPS. Apparently, the ball will measure the
location, force, and torque of a kick, and "vibrate if player
agents or talent scouts want to speak to you". Google claimed that
the ball will cost $10 with a cost-per-kick set of payments in
addition to the basic fee.

Google Analytics

Google Maps

Google's CADIE has a recommended places to visit using Google Maps.
Viewing "CADIE's recommended places for humans" one
will see each of her suggested places listed, that, when clicked,
displays a photo and humorous commentary.

Blogger

Google Chrome with 3D

A build of Google Chrome was
offered rendering web pages in Anaglyph
3D, "powered" by
CADIE.http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/cadie/ A 3D
effect was actually possible with this browser, but it only made
the window appear to be sunken into the monitor.

Google Code

CADIE is set to write code for you based on specified features,
however all that is returned is bad code or witty criticisms of
your request and choice of programing language, recommending the
use of INTERCAL.

CADIE's source code was supposedly uploaded to Google Code [124018][124019], but she changed her mind and replaced it
with a "fun program" [124020] consisting of 31 lines of INTERCAL.
When executed, this program prints out the message "I do not feel
like sharing."

Google Book Search

CADIE recommends some books at Google Book Search homepage. Also, when viewing
a book, there is a Generate book report button. When clicked it
says "Gotcha! It's April Fools' Day! Sorry, but you'll have to
actually read the book yourself."

Google Mobile

Google Mobile has a link to " Brain Search". The instructions are to "Put
phone to forehead for brain indexing" and "Think your query".When
you click "Try Now", a page loads with "Brain indexing" status.
When indexing is complete, a button comes up with "search me". by
clicking this button, the user is directed to fake search results.
There are several possible results:

Oil Tanker Data Center

During the last minutes of Google's Data Center Efficiency Summit, Urs Hoelzle presented in a "special topic":
Google had bought an Oil tanker, the "M/S
Surgey", where Google's data center containers were being submerged
in oil tanks to enable extremely high-efficiency cooling. The
presentation can be seen from 0:41:20 in the
video, and includes slightly customized wikipedia images from
thetopic Oil tanker, including a
retouched photo of commercial oil tanker AbQaiq and the oil tankers
side view graphic.

Even though Google did apply for a US patent to build data centers on cargo ships and Oil cooling is an existing technology, summit
attendee James Hamilton believed this topic to be an April Fools
joke. The ship's name "M/S Surgey" is also likely to be a pun on
Google's Co-founder Sergey Brin.

Halloween

In Halloween 2009, Google celebrates Halloween using this hoax. If
you clicked the Google logo, it would be replaced by a candy
wrapper version. Clicking it again, and more candy would cover the
candy logo. After clicking it again, and candy wrappers would
appear covering the logo. Clicking it for time final time, and it
takes you to the search results for "Halloween 2009". This would
happen when you clicked any Google logo.

Easter eggs

Google Street View production
team

Various Google services also hide Easter eggs meant to be amusing
entertainment.

If one sets the iGoogle theme to the "Beach" option, then at
3:14 AM every morning, the Loch Ness
Monster surfaces for 1 minute, then at 3:15 dives back under.
The reason for the timing of 3:14 is rumoured to be a tribute to
the number pi. Additional 3:14 eggs include the "Seasonal Scape"
showing off the Northern Lights, the "City Scape" with UFOs, the
"Spring Scape" with a monster, and the "Tea House" that has spirits
in the mist.

On Google Earth, tapping out ctrl-alt-A will activate a hidden
flight simulator. (This is now an official feature.)

Going on Google Street View, and heading to the rear of the
company's Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, California, the
Google Street View's production team can be seen.

In Chrome, Google's Web Browser,
entering "about:internets" into the address bar brings up a copy of
the Windows Screen Saver 3D Pipes, with the title "Don't Clog the
Tubes". In the event that this does not occur due to the fact that
the screensaver file does not exist in the system, the browser will
instead display a gray screen with the title "The Tubes are
Clogged!" This has been removed as of the 2.0.169.1 release.

The Google Gear's Firefox add-on description line reads "These
are the gears that power the tubes! :-)"

In Google's iPhone and iPod touch search application, swiping
downwards (past About) repeatedly in the 'Settings' interface
brings up a hidden menu item, called Bells and Whistles, allowing
customization of colors, sounds and more within the app.

Entering the term "table" into Google Translate for
Spanish to English will return "Is there a striptease bar in the
town?" as a definition.

On the Suggest a feature page for Gmail, it shows "Have Gmail
do the laundry" as a suggestion

When using Google Chrome's
"incognito" function, the "New Tab"
page reminds users that incognito mode does not affect the
behaviour of other people, and suggests that they beware of
"Surveillance by secret agents" and "People standing behind
[them]".

For a few days in November 2009, visitors to google.com were
greeted with nothing but the Google logo and a message stating
"This page has been deliberately left blank"[124021]. On movement of the mouse the page
returns to normal.

Non-hoaxes

Google has chosen April Fool's Day to announce some of their actual
products, as a form of viral
marketing.

Shortly before midnight on March 31,
2004, Google announced the launch of Gmail. However, many people believed it was a hoax,
because free web-based e-mail with one gigabyte of storage was
unheard of at the time.

On July 20, 2005, the
36th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon, Google
debuted a version of Google Maps that
included a small segment of the surface of the moon. It is based entirely on NASA images and
includes only a very limited region. Panning causes the map
to tile. The map also gives the locations of all moon landings, and
the Google Moon FAQ humorously mentions a connection to the Google
Copernicus hoax, which Google claimed to be developing. Supposedly,
by 2069, Google Local will support all lunar businesses and
addresses. Zooming to the closest level in Google Moon used to show
that the moon was made of cheese.